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Biteback: Fear not the factual drama

What was Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff, doing at a private preview of Endgame, a Channel 4 drama about secret talks to end apartheid in South Africa in the late 1980s? "Because I was involved in similar discussions with the IRA," Powell told me. His story of closet, often late-night chats with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams was related in Great Hatred, Little Room, which came out last year.

Endgame tells the virtually unknown story of secret talks between the African National Congress and South African negotiators in an English country house, brokered by Consolidated Goldfields, initially because the mining giant wanted a secure business in South Africa. It's the sort of film only Channel 4 now makes. Certainly not the BBC, which, to its shame, is scared of factual dramas. The Channel 4 board member who recently suggested that the hard-pressed channel should give up on